Puppetry course at Hiram College brings students in touch with their inner child (with gallery, vide

By Jeremy Nobile | Staff Writer

Friday

Dec 20, 2013 at 4:00 AM

Kelly Brenizer sometimes struggles to communicate with her brothers, who were diagnosed with developmental delays.

The senior sociology major at Hiram College aspires to be a social worker focusing on children living in impoverished areas, especially those with developmental disabilities because "that hits close to home."

A unique class offered at Hiram for the first time this winter has taught her about a unique medium for communication she expects to apply not only as a social worker, but as a sibling -- puppetry.

"I want to use the puppets as a way for (my brothers) to express how they feel without having temper tantrums or lashing out," she said, noting her one brother is deaf and that she sometimes struggles to remember various sign language gestures, which sometimes leads to mutual frustration.

"I could have them make the puppets interact with each other reflecting how things are at home as a way for them to process that," she added. "It's nice I can use the techniques I learned here to show them there are other ways to communicate with us."

Brenizer is one of seven students in the new "Introduction to Puppetry" class created by Associate Professor Betsy Bauman, chair of Hiram's theater arts department.

Students meet with Bauman for about four hours a day in the three-week course where they learn the history of puppetry around the world and how to design, create and use puppets comprising glove, hand-and-rod and shadow puppet forms.

The workshop is contained in a small, bright room filled with foam, plaster, colorful fabrics and sewing machines where students can be seen practicing their gestures with their counterparts in front of full-length mirrors.

A costume designer and theater professor at the school, Bauman launched the class as a way to not only stimulate minds with creative problem solving, but to help them get in touch with their inner child and the innate human condition to create.

"I want them to prove to themselves that they can take a piece of cloth, a hunk of plaster bandages and solve some kind of problem in a creative way," she said.

Such "problems" include bringing an otherwise inanimate object to life through thoughts and movements.

"This is really like its own medium," said Taylor Rummes, a freshman theater major, whose puppets include Kahma the Chameleon and a villainous pink-faced character complete with top hat and tweedly mustache inspired by Dr. Robotnik (from the Sonic the Hedgehog video games), Davros (an alien from the Dr. Who series) and Snidely Whiplash (of the Dudley Do-Right cartoons).

"As an actor, you can change your facial expressions and don't really have any limitation on how your body can move," he said, "whereas a puppet has set joints and a set face. You have to exaggerate everything you do to try and get the puppet to get that across."

Such unorthodox thinking leads to creative problem solving that can be useful to students of all backgrounds and interests, Bauman said.

It's also a fun way to break up course work in between the fall and spring curriculums dominated by core classes that usually include finals and lengthy term papers that are replaced in the puppetry class by short book reports and skit performances.

For Lydia Snyder, a senior triple majoring in theater, art and music, the joy comes from tapping into the whimsy and imagination of her inner kid.

"It's your childhood kind of put back into perspective," she said. "You can do serious things with it, but you can also be a kid while doing it. It's a lot of fun, and even a little introspective."

Bauman hopes to offer the course again next winter and possibly include more advanced puppets, such as marionette puppets typically made of carved wood and controlled from above using strings.

"What I've taken away from this is that every student can succeed in the classroom on some level, even if they've never done this before," she said. "This isn't just for the art student, and that's awesome."

Contact this reporter at 330-298-1126 or jnobile@recordpub.com

Facebook: Jeremy Nobile, Record-Courier

Twitter: @jnobile_RPC

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